The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Second Lecture

[ 1 ] The first words of the Gospel of John do indeed touch upon the deepest mysteries of the world. You can see this if you allow the spiritual-scientific truths on which they are based to come before your soul; and we will have to delve deeply into spiritual knowledge if these first words of the Gospel are to appear to us in the right light. Some of the things that are quite well known to those of you who have studied the anthroposophical world view for a long time, we will only have to recall briefly. But today we shall have to penetrate certain elementary truths of the anthroposophical world-view with further glimpses into various significant cosmic mysteries.

[ 2 ] We need only very briefly recall the nature of man as this nature presents itself to us in the spiritual-scientific view, initially for the time from the morning, when man wakes up, until the evening, when man again sinks into sleep. We know that the human being consists of the physical body, the etheric or life body, the astral body and the ego. However, these four parts of the human being are really only present in the connection that we normally ascribe to them in the waking state. In particular, it is necessary for us to realize that during the state of sleep at night the human being is basically a completely different entity; for his four members are then joined together in a completely different way than during the waking state. When man sleeps, the physical body and the etheric body lie in bed; the astral body and the ego are in a certain way detached from the connection with the physical body and the etheric body, and are therefore - if we understand the word not in the purely spatial but in the spiritual sense - outside the physical body and the etheric body. Thus, during the night, the human being is an entity that actually consists of two parts: that which has remained in bed and that which has separated itself from the physical body and the etheric body. Now we must above all realize that during the night - from the moment when man falls asleep until the moment when he wakes up again in the morning - that which remains lying in bed, the physical and the etheric body, if they were abandoned by that which fills them during the day - by that which lives in the astral body and in the ego - that they could not then exist as such. And here is where we must delve a little deeper into the mysteries of the world.

[ 3 ] When we have the human physical body before us, we must realize that this physical human body, which we see with our eyes and perceive with our hands, has undergone a long process of development. It has undergone this process of development in the course of the entire evolution of our earth planet. It is already known to those who have studied this matter a little that our earth has gone through earlier states. Just as man passes from embodiment to embodiment, going through repeated earth lives, so our earth, too, has gone through other states before it came to the state it is in today. There are earlier embodiments of a planet just as there are earlier embodiments of a human being. Everything in the big world and in the small world is subject to the law of re-embodiment. And our earth, before it became this earth of ours, had passed through a state that we call the “old moon”, because today's moon is a splintered piece of this old planet. So it is not today's moon that we mean when we speak of the “old moon”, but a planet similar to today's earth. - Just as there is a period of time between an embodiment and a new birth in human beings, so there is a period of time between the embodiment of our planet, which we call the earth, and the one we call the old moon. And it is the same with the state of our planet, which we call the “sun”. A state known as the sun preceded the lunar state of our planet, and the solar state was preceded by a Saturnian state. Thus we can look back on three earlier embodiments of our planet.

[ 4 ] Our physical human body received its very first embodiment on the old Saturn. At that time, on this ancient Saturn, a first formation of the physical human body was formed, which was, of course, quite different from the human body of today. Everything that is present in man today, apart from the physical human body, was not yet present on this ancient Saturn. Only when Saturn transformed itself into the sun, that is, during the second embodiment of our earth planet, was the etheric body added to this physical body, impregnating it. And what was the result? The consequence was that the physical human body underwent a transformation: it was shaped differently, it acquired a different way of being. Thus during the solar incarnation of our earth the physical body stands on the second stage of its existence. How did it attain this second stage? By the fact that - while on Saturn it was still machine-like, automatic - on the sun it became an inwardly living body. The etheric body that had slipped in transformed the physical body. On the moon the astral body slipped into this connection of physical body and etheric body. There again the physical body was reshaped, reshaped a third time, the etheric body only a second time. Finally, on earth, the ego was added to the physical body, etheric body and astral body, and the ego, which now slipped into this threefold connection, transformed this physical body again, so that it finally became the complicated connection that it is today. So what you have before you today as the human physical body is a being that has been reshaped many times, and it has only become as complicated as it appears today because it has gone through four states of development.

[ 5 ] When we speak of our present physical body and say that it consists of the same physical and chemical substances and forces as the minerals outside in the cosmos, then we must also realize that there is still a tremendous difference between this physical human body and the mineral. When we speak in a very elementary way, we emphasize the difference between the physical human body and the physical body of a mineral, or let us say a rock crystal, by saying: The rock crystal retains its form if it is not destroyed from the outside. The physical body of man cannot retain its form through itself; it only has it through this and only as long as an etheric body, an astral body and an ego are in it. At the moment when the etheric body, astral body and ego separate from him, the physical body begins to become something quite different from what it is between birth and death: it follows the laws of physical and chemical substances and forces and disintegrates, while the physical body of the mineral remains intact.

[ 6 ] Something similar is the case with the etheric body. After the etheric body, astral body and ego have separated from the physical body immediately after death, the etheric body also leaves the connection with the astral body and the ego after some time and dissolves in the world ether, just as the physical body dissolves in the earth. All that then remains of the etheric body is the extract of which we have often spoken; this remains united with the human being. Thus we can say that the physical body of man is in a certain respect of the same value as the mineral kingdom around us. But we must realize the great difference that exists between the mineral kingdom and the physical human body.

[ 7 ] Someone could say: Yes, it has just been said that on Saturn our physical body was not yet permeated by an etheric body, not by an astral body and not by an ego, for these were only added on the sun, the moon and the earth; so there the physical body of man really was - one could say - of the value of a mineral. - But now we have shown how three transformations of this physical body followed one another after this old state in which it was during Saturn's existence. Even the present mineral, which you have before you as a dead mineral, cannot possibly exist in such a way that it merely has a physical body within it. Realize that for this physical world of ours what is said and must be said is correct: that the mineral has only a physical body. Here in the physical world the mineral has only a physical body, but that is not absolutely correct. Just as the physical body, when it stands before us, has within it its etheric body, its astral body and its ego, which belong to it, so also the mineral has not only a physical body, but also an etheric body, an astral body and an ego; only these higher members of its being are in higher worlds. The mineral has an etheric body, which is only in the so-called astral world; the mineral has an astral body, which is only in the so-called devachanic or heavenly world, and it has an ego, only this is in a still higher or spiritual world. So the physical human body differs from the physical body of a mineral in that the physical human body has its etheric body, its astral body and its ego within itself here in this physical world in the waking state; but the mineral does not have its etheric body, its astral body and its ego within itself here, for we know that there are other worlds besides our world. The world that we usually perceive with our senses is permeated by the astral world and this again by the devachanic world, which is divided into a lower and a higher devachanic world.

[ 8 ] The human being is now a privileged being compared to the mineral in that he has his other three limbs within him when he wakes up during the day. The mineral does not have these members in itself; we must imagine it in such a way that the mineral is not complete on the physical plane. Think of a human fingernail. You will admit to me that you cannot find this human fingernail anywhere outside in nature as an entity existing by itself; for it presupposes, if it is to grow, the rest of the human organism; it cannot be without it. Now imagine a small being that only has eyes to see your fingernails, but no ability to see the rest of your organism. Such a small being would see through all the rest of the room, but only see your fingernails. So the minerals here are only the fingernails, so to speak, and you only see the minerals fully when you ascend to higher worlds. There they have their etheric body, astral body and so on, and here only their physical limbs. Let us keep all this quite firmly in view in order to make it clear to us that in higher spiritual reality there can be no being at all that does not have an etheric body, an astral body and an ego of some kind. A physical being cannot exist at all if it does not belong to an etheric body, an astral body and an ego.

[ 9 ] Now, however, there is actually a certain contradiction between everything that has already been said today. - It has been said that man is a completely different being at night, when he is asleep, than during the day, when he is awake. During the day, this human being is quite understandable to us: there it stands before us as a four-membered entity. But now we approach the sleeping human being and observe his physical being. There we have the physical body and etheric body lying in bed, and the astral body and ego are outside. This gives rise to the contradiction that we have before us a being that is abandoned by the astral body and ego. The stone does not sleep; its etheric body, astral body and ego do not penetrate it, but they always remain in the same connection with it. In man, the astral body and the ego come out every night. He does not take care of his physical body and etheric body during the night and leaves them to themselves every night. This fact is not always carefully considered. Every night this transformation takes place with the human being, that he, as an actual spiritual human being, takes leave of his physical body and etheric body, which he leaves to himself. But now these cannot exist for themselves; for no physical body and also no etheric body can exist for itself, even the stone must be permeated by its higher members. And then you will easily understand that it is quite impossible for your physical body and your etheric body to remain in bed during the night without an astral body and an ego. But what happens during the night? Your astral body and your I are not in the physical body and the etheric body, but there is another I and another astral body in them! This is where occultism points you to the divine-spiritual being, to higher spiritual beings. While at night your ego and your astral body are out of your physical body and your etheric body, the astral body and the ego of higher divine-spiritual beings are actually active in the physical and etheric body. And this comes from the following:

[ 10 ] If you look at the whole course of human development from the Saturnian state through the solar and lunar state to the earth, you will say: On Saturn there was also only the physical human body present; there was no human etheric body, no human astral body and no human ego in the physical body. But this physical body could not exist on its own back then any more than a stone can exist on its own today. At that time the physical body could only exist because it was permeated by the etheric body, astral body and ego of divine-spiritual beings. Divine-spiritual beings dwelt in it, and they also remained dwelling. And when a separate etheric body came into this physical body on the sun, only the smaller human etheric body mixed, so to speak, with the earlier etheric body of divine-spiritual beings. And it was the same on Saturn; on Saturn, too, the physical body was permeated by divine-spiritual entities. And now, if we have understood this correctly, we come to a deeper understanding of the human being today, and we are now in a position to repeat and better understand what has been taught in Christian esotericism from the beginning.

[ 11 ] This Christian esotericism has always been cultivated alongside the external Christian exoteric teaching. I have often pointed out that the great apostle of Christianity, Paul, used his powerful, flaming gift of oratory to teach Christianity to the nations, but that he also founded an esoteric school whose leader was Dionysius Areopagita, who is mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles (17:34). In this Christian esoteric school in Athens, which was founded directly by Paul himself, the purest spiritual science was taught. And what was taught there, we will now be able to bring before our souls, after we have gathered the building blocks for this in the previous considerations.

[ 12 ] In this Christian-esoteric school it was also said: If you look at man as he stands before you as a waking day-man, he consists of physical body, etheric body, astral body and the I, even if the words were not exactly the same as they are used today, but that is not the point. But then it was also pointed out where the human being currently stands in his development. This human being, as he consists of these four members, does not remain as he appears to us. If we want to look at the human being purely from the four members, we do not have to look at the present human being, but we have to go far back in development - to Lemurian times. In Lemurian times the ego was added to the human being, who at that time consisted of a physical body, an etheric body and an astral body. Then one could say in a pure sense that the human being consisted of a physical body, etheric body, astral body and ego. Since then, every human being has gone through many embodiments. What is the meaning of this development through the incarnations? The purpose of this development through the incarnations is that from embodiment to embodiment the ego works on itself, that it transforms the three members of its being. It begins first with the transformation of its astral body. In no average person today is this astral body as it was before the ego worked on it in the first earthly embodiment. In the first incarnation on earth the ego transformed from within certain ideas, sensations and passions that were originally given to man; and from incarnation to incarnation more and more is transformed through the work of the ego. So that we can say: Not only does man today have the four members: physical body, etheric body, astral body and ego, but through the work of the ego he has a part within the astral body which is the creature of the ego itself. And in every human being today the astral body splits into two parts: a part transformed by the ego and a part not transformed by the ego. And this will go on and on. There will come a time for every human being when his entire astral body will be a creature of his ego. In Oriental wisdom it has become customary to call that part of the astral body which has already been transformed by the ego, Manas. Thus man still consists of his four members; but we can now distinguish five parts: physical body, etheric body, astral body, ego, and as the fifth part the transformed part of the astral body, manas or spirit-self. So that we can say: In every human being the astral body is such that it contains manas or spirit-self; this is a work of the ego, a product of the work of the ego. The human being will continue to work on himself. The earth will undergo further embodiments. Man will gradually attain the ability that can already be attained today by the initiate: that he also works on his etheric body. Yes, the average person is already working on it today; and as much of his etheric body is transformed into a product of the ego, we call this the buddhi or the life spirit. And finally man comes to transform his physical body from the ego; and as much as he transforms the physical body from the ego, we call this Atman or the spirit man.

[ 13 ] Let us look to a distant, distant future, when the earth will have gone through other planetary forms, other embodiments, when it will have passed, as we say in occultism, through the Jupiter state, the Venus state and the volcanic state. Then man will stand on a considerably higher level and will have transformed his whole astral body into manas or spirit self, his whole etheric body into buddhi or life spirit, and his whole physical body into atman or spirit man.

[ 14 ] Let us compare this man, as he will stand before us at the end of our earthly career, with the man as he was there at the beginning of the earthly career. In the beginning, only the physical body of this human being was present. This physical body was permeated by the etheric body, astral body and ego, but these belonged to divine, higher beings; they only dwelt within it. At the end of his earthly career the human being is permeated by his ego; and this ego itself dwells in the astral body when it has permeated the astral body as manas or spirit self. This ego has then permeated the etheric body, it is completely permeated by the buddhi or life-spirit; and the physical body is completely permeated by atman or the spirit-man, the products of the ego. A very great difference between man at the beginning of his development and man at the end of his development! But it is precisely when we visualize this difference that what I have deliberately presented as a contradiction, the state of sleep, becomes explicable. It is precisely from the form in which Christian esotericism has explained this that everything will become understandable to us. We must become clear: When the earth has reached the end of its development, what will it be that confronts us as a physical body? The physical body of today? It is not that at all! - but what the ego will have made of this physical body. This physical body will be completely spiritualized, as will the etheric body and the astral body. But it was already spiritualized, and also the etheric body and the astral body, before the human being spiritualized them from his ego. Even the stone today, as we have said, is spiritualized by the etheric body, astral body and ego, which belong to the stone while living in higher spiritual worlds. Thus we will understand that Christian esotericism is right when it says: “Yes, man cannot yet master that which we have before us today as the physical human body; for man has not yet reached the end of his development, where he will work from his ego into the physical body. Nor can he yet control what he has in the etheric body; he will only be able to control that when the earth is in the state of Venus. So man cannot yet control the physical body and etheric body from his ego. He will only be able to control them when he has developed buddhi and atma. But such a physical and etheric body must be controlled in a spiritual way. That which man himself can one day give to the physical body and the etheric body must already be in them now. Even today the spiritual parts must already be in the etheric body and in the physical body, which the ego can one day give to them. These were already there in the physical body in the beginning, when man was on Saturn; they were in him when he was on the sun, and they have remained in him. Thus Christian esotericism rightly says: In the physical human body today is already that which will once be in him, when man will be at the summit of his development, but it is divine Atman, it is divine-spiritual entity; and in the etheric body the Buddhi is already inside, but it is divine life-spirit. And the astral body of man, we have said, consists of two parts, the part which man has already mastered and the part which he has not yet mastered. So what is inside that which he has not yet mastered? Also a spirit self, but a divine spirit self! Only in that part of the astral body in which the ego has been active since the first incarnation is the actual spiritual life of the human being. Thus we have the human being before us.

[ 15 ] Let us now look at him in the waking state. What will we say? The physical body as it appears to us is only the outside. On the inside it is what is called the Atmic Entity. On the inside it is of divine-spiritual, higher essence, it is permeated by divine-spiritual, higher essence. It is the same with the etheric body. On the outside it is what holds the physical body together, on the inside it is the divine spirit of life. And even the astral body is permeated by divine spirit self. Only the transformed part of the astral body is something that the ego has already conquered from this whole context.

[ 16 ] Let us now consider the sleeping human being. There this contradiction disappears at once. We approach the sleeping human being and see that the human being as astral body and ego is outside. Every night man calmly leaves his physical body and his etheric body. If he were to leave the physical body without the divine-spiritual taking care of it, he would find his physical body destroyed in the morning. The divine-spiritual physical and a divine-spiritual etheric is in it, and that remains in it when the physical body and etheric body lie in bed and the astral body and ego are out. The physical body and etheric body are permeated by divine-breathable and divine-buddhic essence.

[ 17 ] Let us now look back to the beginning of our development on earth, when nothing of the ego had yet been conquered in man. When man was before his first incarnation, the ego was not yet connected with the three limbs, the physical body, the etheric body and the astral body. The physical body, etheric body and astral body came over from the moon, and only on earth did the ego enter. On the other hand, the divine I was in them; they could not have existed if this divine I had not permeated them completely. The astral body was permeated by a divine spirit-self, the etheric body by a divine spirit of life, and the physical body was permeated by a divine-breath or spirit-man. - And now we look back even further to the evolution of the moon, sun and Saturn. On Saturn the divine spirit of life, which still inhabits the human being lying in bed at night, was such that it formed the human body, namely the physical body, as something mineral; in the solar state it formed it as something vegetable; on the moon it could form it as something that could feel pleasure and pain, but could not yet say “I” to itself. He has passed through these lowest stages. And now we step over into the actual embodiment on earth.

[ 18 ] There the physical human body was to become even more perfect than it was before through a further transformation that it had to undergo. What had he not been able to do before? What was completely alien to him? What had the divine spirit kept with him? What had he not yet entrusted to the human body? That was the ability to let his soulfulness resound from within! This human body on the 'animal level' was mute on the moon. The ability to let the inside resound outwards was still with God. It was not yet entrusted to his own being. Even if there are animal beings who can already sound today, this is something else; they are still in quite different states, they sound, but the divinity in them sounds. The expression of the inner soul in words was only granted to man on earth. Before that, people were mute. This ability of the word therefore came to the human being with the existence on earth.

[ 19 ] If we now look at the whole of what we have placed before the soul today, then we will say: The whole development has been so directed that the ability to speak, the word, was originally with God and that God first created the preconditions that the physical apparatus got the ability to let this word sound from within. Everything was directed and guided in this way. Like the flower in its seed, the sounding, the speaking human being, the human being gifted with words and logos, was already there in the seed on Saturn. But the sound was hidden in the seed; it only developed from the seed, just as the whole plant is hidden in the seed and develops from it.

[ 20 ] Now let us look back at the physical human body as it was on Saturn and ask ourselves: Where does this physical human body come from? What is its ultimate origin? Without what could it never have undergone the entire development? It comes from the Logos or the Word. For back then on Saturn this physical human body was already directed in such a way that it later became a speaking body, a witness for the Logos. The fact that today you are formed in such a way that this human body has its present form stems from the fact that the whole plan of our creation was based on the “Word”. The whole human body is ordered towards the Word, and from the beginning it is so disposed that the Word could ultimately spring forth from it. Therefore, when the esoteric Christian looks at this physical human body and asks: What is its original archetype, and what is its image? then he says to himself: This physical human body has its archetype in the Word or the Logos; the Logos or the Word worked in the physical human body from the beginning. And the Logos is still at work today: when the physical human body lies in bed and is abandoned by the ego, then the divine Logos is at work in the members of the being abandoned by man. If we ask about the first origin of the physical body, we say: The first is the Logos or the Word.

[ 21 ] And now we go further in the development. Saturn passed over into the solar state; the life body was incorporated into the human physical body. But what had to occur for the progress to happen as it has just happened?

[ 22 ] While on Saturn the physical body was a kind of machine, a kind of automaton, but completely permeated and held by the Logos, on the sun the life body was incorporated, and the divine life spirit worked in it. On Saturn, we will say, the human body is an expression of the Logos. Saturn passes away; this human body embodies itself anew in the sun; there the life body, permeated by the life spirit, incorporates itself into the physical body. The Logos became life in the sun by bringing the human being to a higher level. The Logos became life in the sun! And now we go further. - On the moon the astral body was incorporated into the human being. What is the astral body? It appears to the clairvoyant consciousness even today as an aura that surrounds the human being. It is a body of light that cannot be seen in the present consciousness. But when it is seen in clairvoyant consciousness, it is light, spiritual light; and our physical light is only transformed spiritual light. The physical sunlight is also the embodiment of the spiritual-divine auric world light. That is its basis. In today's world there is a light that flows to man from the sun. But there is also another light that emanates from his inner light. On the moon the astral body of man still shone for the beings around him. Thus on the moon the astral light body of man was added to the physical body and etheric body.

[ 23 ] And now we look at the whole progress of development. On Saturn we have the physical body as the expression of the Logos. On the Sun the etheric body is added as the expression of the spirit of life: the Logos became life. On the moon the light body is added: Life became light! And so we have the course of the development of the human body. - When man entered the earth, he was a creature of the divine-spiritual beings. At that time he existed because in his physical body, in his etheric body, in his astral body lived the Logos, who was life and who became light. And now, what happened on earth? For the human being and in the human being, the I was added. But through the addition of the I, man became able not only to live in the light, in life, but he became able to look at everything from the outside, to face the Logos, the life, the light. This made everything material for him, gave it material existence. - And when we have carried the thought this far, then we have fixed approximately exactly the point at which we want to begin next time and show how the human being born out of divinity has actually become today's I-gifted human being. For we see that the divine pre-human existed before today's I-gifted human being. What man has conquered through his ego he snatches every night from the physical body and the etheric body; whatever was in him remains in it and supplies the physical body and the etheric body when man leaves them faithlessly and does not take care of them. There it is inside, that original spiritual-divine entity.

[ 24 ] All; what we have now tried to present with the expressions of Christian esotericism as the deep secret of existence, and what was familiar to those who were “servants of the Logos” in the first times, is said unambiguously in large, succinct sentences in the Gospel of John. One only has to translate these first words in the correct, meaningful way. Really correctly translated, these words give the facts that we have just presented. Let us place this fact once more before our souls, so that we may understand its value quite exactly.

[ 25 ] In the beginning was the Logos as the archetype of the physical human body, and it lay at the foundation of all things. All animals, plants and minerals came into being later. On Saturn there was really only man; on the sun the animal kingdom was added, on the moon the plant kingdom and on the earth the mineral kingdom. On the sun the Logos became life, and on the moon it became light; and this came before man when he was endowed with the ego. But man had to learn to recognize what the Logos was and what he finally emerged as. First the Logos was, then it became life, then light, and this light lives in the astral body. The light shone into the human interior, into the darkness, into ignorance. And the purpose of being on earth is for man to overcome the darkness within so that he can recognize the light of the Logos.

[ 26 ] Lapidary, perhaps - as some will say - difficult to understand words are therefore the first words of the Gospel of John. But should what is most profound in the world be said in trivial words? Is it not a strange conception, almost a mockery of holiness, when it is said that to understand a pocket watch it is necessary to penetrate deeply into the essence of the matter with one's intellect, but to understand the divine in the world the simple, plain, most naive human understanding must suffice! It is terrible that this has happened to mankind today, that when the depths of religious documents are pointed out, it is said: Oh, why all these complicated arguments, it must all be plain and simple! - But no one but he who has the good intention and the good will to delve into the great facts of the world penetrates into the deep meaning of such words as those found at the beginning of the most profound of the Gospels, the Gospel of John. These are a paraphrase of what we have just explained.

[ 27 ] And now we translate the opening words:

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and a God (or divine) was the Word.
This was in the beginning with God.
All things came into being through the same, and apart from this Word nothing of what has come into being has come into being.
In him was life, and the life became the light of men.
And the light shone into the darkness, but the darkness did not comprehend it.“

[ 28 ] The Gospel of John goes on to tell how the darkness gradually comes to be comprehended.